Super 8

Super 8 is one of the very few summer movies that aren't a sequel or a prequel or based on a comic book character or worse a sequel or prequel  based on a comic book character.  But don't let that fool you to believe that it's an original movie.  Far from it.  It's indeed a movie with hardly an iota of original idea.  Super 8 is J.J. Abrams endless tribute to his forebears, mainly and namely Steven Spielberg, the producer of Super 8, who himself has a hard time making any movie that is better than Jaws or E.T.  Except for the spectacular and gratuitous train wreck in the beginning, and that charming little movie within a movie in the end credit, there isn't really anything new, exciting or charming about Super 8.  The children actors do a good job in injecting some light and tear jerking moments that supposedly to show humanity but since the story and direction are so lame that it all feels forced and wasted.  Perhaps in movie, there is no plagiarism, only tribute, and in Super 8, it's a sanctioned one from its producer Spielberg.  Watching Super 8 is like reading some cool tumblr blog with endless re-blogs from other cool tumblr blogs which re-blog from yet other cool tumblr blogs which re-blog the blogs that re-blog them.  It's kind of cool, meta and somewhat interesting in the beginning but after a while, you just got tired of this whole endless re-blog thing no matter how cool it looks and especially and (un)fortunately you have experienced the original blog first hand.  Just like if you had watched E.T back in 1982.